The Role of Media in the Globalization of Hip-Hop Culture
This assignment is a standard academic essay. Your papers are expected to make use of original research, develop an original insight or perspective, and put forth an original and compelling argument. Instructions for Research Proposal and Annotated Bibliography The proposal component of this assignment is to both get you thinking about your final paper early in the term and to provide an early opportunity for you to get some feedback on your ideas. Its job is to provide a basic outline of what you intend to do in your final paper, and should contain three basic elements of information: 1) provide a clear outline of your paper’s topic including your proposed research question (i.e., describe WHAT your paper will be on), 2) indicate why it is a significant and worthy topic of investigation (i.e., explain WHY this topic is appropriate and important with respect to this course), and 3) provide an outline of how you intend to organize and carry out your investigation (IOW, provide a brief preliminary outline of your final paper) by introducing the theories, examples or case studies you will use to illustrate your argument (i.e, explain HOW you will organize your paper). Your annotated bibliography should have 2 scholarly sources, none of which are assigned as course readings (you can use course readings as sources for your final paper, but NOT for the proposal). Each bibliographic entry should provide (1) a properly formatted bibliographic entry (APA style, preferably), (2) a brief summary of the source, and (3) a brief description of how it is appropriate to your chosen research topic. Each annotation should be between 1/3 to 1/2 a page, double-spaced. ** Please note that the 2 scholarly sources requirement
Suggested Research Topics
You may also develop and propose your own topic. If you wish to do this, feel free to consult with me before either part of the assignment is due. 1) Globalization is often heralded as bringing about a fundamentally new form of society. But is globalization really new? If so, in what ways? If not, what are the basic continuities with previous forms of interconnected societies? How might the media of the day either contribute to or resist globalization? (NOTE: This is NOT an either/or question. Feel free to say it is both new AND old. However, make sure to distinguish which features are which.) 2) Explore the relationship between network media, our sense of time and space and the process of globalization. What are the social and cultural implications of such new ways of considering time and space? To what degree is our current understanding of globalization itself a product of a new attitude towards, understanding of and relationship towards a mediated experience of time and space? 3) Pick an historical epoch (e.g. ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Han dynasty-era China, 18th or 19th Century Europe, post-WWII, etc.) and examine the state of globalization as it existed then. What were the key network technologies that facilitated this condition? What were some of the social and cultural implications of the network society that prevailed at that time? 4) Protocols and standards are crucial to the proper functioning of media networks. Choose one of these media networks (e.g. the Internet, the telephone network, the rail network, satellite communication, global container shipping, etc.) and examine the historical development of its protocols and standards. How has this process unfolded? Who are the central players? What sort of politics have been involved? Whose interests have shaped the development of this network? What are some of the social, political, cultural or environmental implications of the way your chosen network has been organized? 5) Network development is inevitably an uneven process. Choose a particular network and analyze how the uneven development of this network has manifested in social, cultural, political or economic inequality. 6) The cultural dimensions of globalization are one of the most remarked upon features of the phenomenon. Choose an example of this aspect of globalization (e.g. globalization of a particular popular culture industry such as the film or the music industries; globalization of higher education; etc.) and profile its history and current conditions. What have been some of the social, political or economic accommodations or transformations required for this aspect of cultural globalization to take root? What are some of the tensions or challenges engendered by it?
The Role of Media in the Globalization of Hip-Hop Culture
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The Role of Media in the Globalization of Hip-Hop Culture
In 1973 at a dance party in South Bronx (NY), DJ Kool Herc set up his turntables and introduced a new music mixing technique to shape the music and media landscape for years. According to Flores (2012), Herc's technique, which involved the transition from track to track and isolation and repetition of music breaks, led to the realization of the Hip-Hop genre. Today, fifty years since Herc's ingenious disc-jockeying discovery, Hip-Hop is among the most popular music genres in the world. From a commercial point of view, this genre is the most successful in the United States. Hip Hop. Central to its beginnings and growth outside the United States is a series of social, political, and economic accommodations besides the role of media and the wider phenomenon of globalization. In this regard, the current paper aim to profile the history and current conditions of Hip Hop as part of the many cultural dimensions of globalization.
The Role of Media in the Globalization Phenomenon
Globalization refers to the growing interdependence of the world's populations, cultures, and economies. Scholars from Western societies agree that globalization started with Columbus' voyages in 1492 (O'Rourke & Williamson, 2002, p. 34). According to these scholars, these voyages marked the beginning of interactions between different global cultures or the discovery of the New World. Since then, developments in transport, communication, business, and international politics have transformed the world into a global village where it is increasingly easy to interact with people, information, services, and goods from almost all corners of the world. Given that the flow of people, services, capital, and goods across the world will not stop, international business experts assert that globalization is a process that will continue, particularly when it comes to refined modes of transport, communication, and an increase in tolerance of foreign cultures by different communities (Contractor, 2022). What follows globalization, as its cultural dimension, is the adoption of foreign cultures by other communities worldwide. The Hip-Hop culture, for instance, started in the Bronx fifty years ago; today, it has transformed into a global culture played across all the continents, notably in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia.
As already mentioned, the flow of information across borders is among the key pillars of globalization. At the time of Columbus, such an exchange of information could only occur through word of mouth. Between then and now, there have been remarkable developments in media, from the discovery of the hand press in the 15th century, fax machines, newspapers, telephone, radio, TV, and the internet to today's social media (Dooley, 2015). In other words, since Columbus' voyages, each generation has improved the flow of information across the world through media. Given the modern advancement of communication technologies, media will continue to be refined and increasingly reach more people. In essence, the transformation of Hip-Hop culture from a neighborhood house party trend to a global culture is what media does. Mirrless (2013) argued that the spread of cultures that revolve around entertainment would not have been possible without the media. It is through media that different people or communities have access to such cultural expressions and can adopt, copy, or even localize them within local cultures. As Ayish (2014, p. 16) illustrated, "from 'many voices, one world' to 'many worlds, one voice." In other words, when Hip-Hop started in the Bronx, it involved many voices in one world. After fifty years, it has turned into many worlds with the same voice. And central to this remarkable transformation is the power of media to turn a local trend into a global phenomenon.
Origins of Hip Hop
In the early 1970s, life in the Bronx was particularly tough for poor communities, particularly African Americans. Aside from substance abuse, racial discrimination, gangs, police brutality, and poverty, this decade saw it is major metropolitan razed down by fires (Patenaude, 2018). In the fires, 250,000 residents in the Bronx lost their homes, with 80% of the housing stock destroyed (Gonzalez, 2022). In the 1950s and 60s, many middle-class White Americans moved to the suburbs leaving mainly African Americans in cities. This movement came with the slashing of budgets and redirection of resources to the suburbs, leaving city dwellers in delipidated conditions (Sutton, 2018). Faced with limited economic opportunities and increased possibilities of interacting with the criminal justice system, youth in the Bronx are seeking their forms of cultural expression. They wanted a voice and an identity that would enable them. Thus, Hip Hop came when these urban communities, under extreme hardship, sought forms of expression and a means to identity.
Soon after DJ Kool Herc spun the same record on twin turntables, extending and elongating percussion breaks, other DJs in the Bronx tried to outdo him. As explained by Alridge and Stewart (2005), the dance scene quickly attracted different artists, including hopeful poets, songwriters, urban philosophers, and visual artists who added different dimensions to the style leading to the Hip-Hop genre. According to Gosa (2015), this genre has five defining elements: deejaying, rapping, graffiti painting, break dancing, and knowledge. Deejaying is the artistic handling of music and beats, rapping (or poetry) is the process of syncing spoken-word poetry to a beat. At the same time, breakdancing is the backbone from which the genre evolved. On the other hand, knowledge involves understanding the social, moral, and spiritual context in which Hip-Hop started and developed, including current issues in society like racial injustice, corruption, and police brutality.
The Hip Hop music produced in the 1970s and 1980s became what is known as Old School Hip Hop. It grew on the backs of DJs like Kool Herc, who became synonymous with record scratches and drum beats; some of the elements still present in hip-hop today. The era saw wide use of needle-dropping and scratching turntable techniques alongside rapping. The rapping borrowed from black power poetry, talking blues songs, and West African griots. In 1979, Hip Hop gained national recognition when Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight went platinum with over five million copies sold across USA and Canada. This prominence ushered in a new wave of performers, musicians, artists, and poets in the New Hip-Hop Era.
By the late 1980s, artists like LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Run-D.M.C, and Beastie Boys were transforming hip by borrowing from their contemporaries while adding their personas. LL Cool J, for instance, alongside singers of his ilk, introduced romantic themes to the genre. Through performances on MTV, Run-D.M.C expanded the Hip-Hop audience, while Public Enemy introduced a political ideology (Flores, 2012). The Beastie Boys, on the other hand, developed deejaying through sampling. Other artists like Queen Latifah defined the place of women in a genre that men had largely dominated. Expansion beyond regional roots saw the emergence of NW. Who ...